Dr. Yongwoo Lee is a professor of Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts of Shanghai University, and artistic director of SIAC (Shanghai International Art City) Research Institute. He is the founding artistic director of Gwangju Biennale in 1995 and served as president of the Gwangju Biennale Foundation (2008-2014). He was the president of IBA (International Biennial Association) from 2013 to 2017, and the executive director of Shanghai Himalayas Museum (2015-2017).

As a curator, he has worked on numerous projects that reinterpret and practice multidisciplinary visual grammars produced through historical, sociopolitical and environmental sites, rather than serving aesthetic interpretations of art. His projects include the Shanghai Project, which deals with climate changes and human extinction, Challenge Souls (2019, PSA, cocurated with Gong Yan) , and the 30thAnniversary of Gwangju Civil Uprising (2010, Gwangju Museum), Nam June Paik Retrospective (National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art), Dansaekhwa (Palazzo Contarini Polognac, 56th Venice Biennale Collateral event), Film and Video since 1980s (Shanghai Himalays Museum),100th anniversary of John Cage's birth （Gwangju Museum), Tiger's Tail (Palazzo Casino and Vendramin, Venice Biennale), etc.

His published books on art and technology, information and discourses of critical theory that include Information and Reality (Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh), Nam June Paik (Samsung Publication), The Origins of Video Art (Munyemadang), Art and Life of Nam June Paik (Yeoleumsa),Dansaekhwa, etc.